2024 | SUMMER SCHOOL
The Most Holy Eucharist: Sacrifice, Presence, Banquet
Opening address by Fr Justin Ford
The theme of our Summer School is ‘The Most Holy Eucharist: Sacrifice, Presence, Banquet’. Sacrifice: the Eucharistic celebration, the Mass, is most fundamentally the Sacrifice of the Cross, perpetuated down the ages. In the words of the Council of Trent: ‘The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different.’ Then, the aspect of Presence: the Holy Sacrifice involves the supreme presence of Christ to his Church, which is his real and substantial presence under the appearances of bread and wine. And Banquet: his closeness to each one of us culminates when we receive the Sacrificial Victim, really present, in the Sacred Banquet of Holy Communion. Sometimes we say ‘meal’, which is true; but the word ‘Banquet’ highlights that we are not talking just about an ordinary meal.
Sacrifice, Presence and Banquet. The linking of those three words is from a line in St John Paul II’s final encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia. (‘The Church draws her life from the Eucharist’ (2003) 61) This linking is a helpful and simple way of keeping in mind the richness of the Eucharistic Mystery. It cannot be grasped by taking just one aspect or another in isolation. We cannot reduce our understanding of it to only one perspective.
Those three aspects are closely bound together – you cannot have one without the others. The Real Presence only comes to be in the context of the Sacrifice, of the Mass (though as we know, the Presence continues after Mass is over). The One who is present is there as the Sacrificial Victim, Crucified and Risen. But the Sacrifice itself can only take place because of the Real Presence. It is because Christ is really present that the Sacrificial Victim is one and the same on Calvary and in the Mass – which is essential if the Mass and Calvary are to be one and the same sacrifice, as the Church teaches. And the Sacrifice and the Presence are directed towards, and culminate in, our reception of Christ in the sacred Banquet of Holy Communion. It is no accident, obviously, that the Sacrificial Victim is present to us under the outward appearances of food and drink – bread and wine. From the start, the Eucharist is directed towards being eaten and drunk by us.
This first talk is about the source of our Eucharistic faith and knowledge: Scripture and Tradition, as interpreted by the Magisterium. Divine revelation, the saving message of Christ, is passed on as a living transmission and proclamation, generation to generation, from the Apostles until Christ’s Second Coming; and that transmission is called ‘Tradition’. The same proclamation of salvation in written form is Sacred Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit. And the Magisterium, the living teaching office of the Pope and the Bishops, has been entrusted with the task of rightly interpreting the Word of God, both written and unwritten.
The Eucharist in Scripture
First, Sacred Scripture. There are few scriptures we know better than the texts on the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper – we hear them at the consecration in every Mass.
In the New Testament there are four institution narratives: in the Gospels of St Matthew, St Mark and St Luke; and in the first letter of St Paul to the Corinthians. (The account of the Last Supper in St John’s Gospel does not include an institution narrative; instead, John speaks about the Eucharist in his reporting (Ch. 6) of Jesus’ ‘Bread of Life’ discourse following the feeding of the five thousand.)
The institution narratives
Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts are very similar to each other; and Luke’s and Paul’s are very similar. We might ask, why are there differences at all? We believe in the total truth of Scripture – meaning, anything that the human author intended to affirm as true, is true, because it is also ‘affirmed by the Holy Spirit’. (Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum (1965) 11 (DS 4216)) In particular, the Gospels give us historical truth. Vatican II proclaimed: ‘Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy maintained and continues to maintain, that the four Gospels…whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while he lived among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation, until the day when he was taken up.’ (Dei Verbum 19 (DS 4226))
That does not mean that we always have the exact word that Jesus used at every point. For one thing, the Gospels are written in Greek, whereas Jesus spoke in Aramaic. But the evangelists had no intention of writing down every single precise word. That is obvious from reading the different Gospels, where we see the little differences between them in their wording of what Our Lord said. (cf. Pontifical Biblical Commission, Instruction Sancta Mater Ecclesia ‘On the Historical Truth of the Gospels’ (1964) 9 (DS 4406)) But in any case, what we have, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the absolute truth at every point of the substance of what Jesus meant. (ibid.) Likely, often enough we have the actual word used, at least in translation – but certainly, Our Lord’s real meaning.
So that is why there are slight differences between Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul in their accounts of Jesus instituting the Eucharist, and why that does not matter for the absolute historical truth of the Gospels.
We will look first at Matthew and Mark:
Matthew 26:26-28 ‘Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”’
Mark 14:22-24 ‘And as they were eating, he took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”’
The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist has its most central proclamation, of course, in the very words of institution. ‘This is my body…this is my blood.’ Not ‘This represents my body’, or ‘This symbolises my body.’ But notice that the sacrificial aspect is there as well: ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’ This was the sacramental anticipation of what would happen the next day on Calvary; and now in the Mass, we celebrate the sacramental memorial of Calvary. Notice also the combination of the four actions: he took bread, blessed, broke it,
and gave it to them. Took, blessed, broke and gave. Matthew, Mark and Luke use the same four words in their account of the feeding of the five thousand, and Luke in his account of the meal at Emmaus. They are highlighting the link with the Eucharist. (Luke in his institution narrative says ‘gave thanks’ instead of ‘blessed’; but apart from that, the words are the same.)
And those same four actions, ‘took, blessed (or gave thanks), broke, gave’, are explicitly named straight before the Consecration in every Mass. Over the course of the Mass, we take bread (the Offertory); we bless it, giving thanks (the Eucharistic Prayer – the very word ‘eucharist’ is from the Greek for ‘thanksgiving’); we break it (at the ‘Lamb of God’); and give it (Communion).
We look next at the institution narratives of Luke and Paul – again very similar to each either, like Matthew and Mark. That makes sense, because Luke was a companion of Paul on his journeys, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles (Luke’s sequel to his Gospel). So Luke and Paul would have constantly been using the same form of Jesus’ words:
Luke 22:19-20 ‘And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after supper, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”’
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 ‘For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’
Again we see the sacrificial aspect – in Luke’s account: ‘This is my body, which is given for you.’ ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’; and in the words of St Paul that we know from the second Memorial Acclamation at Mass, ‘As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’
It is from Luke and Paul that we have Christ’s command, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ – and with the command, necessarily the empowerment, to do what he had done. With those words, as the Council of Trent infallibly defined, he made the apostles the first priests, and instituted the Sacrament of Holy Orders. (DS 1752)
Jesus’ ‘Bread of Life’ discourse
As mentioned, John’s account of the Last Supper does not have an institution narrative. It is believed that John wrote some time after the other Gospels were finished and distributed, so he sees no need of repeating lots of the things they had already said. But what John gives us is the ‘Bread of Life’ discourse of Jesus, which really spells out what is contained in those few words of the institution narratives, ‘This is my body...this is my blood.’ So we read:
John 6:48-58 ‘“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” ‘The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us
his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”’
The ‘Bread of Life’ discourse helps us understand the inner meaning of the Last Supper. The words of Jesus could hardly be more explicit, and indeed, his hearers take them at face value. So, they ask each other, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ And Jesus does not make things any easier. He does not tell them they have misunderstood, but reiterates, ‘My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed’. But what he could hardly explain to them at that point was the mysterious sacramental way that we would receive his flesh and blood – not the natural physical way that his hearers assumed, but still a completely real way.
Some of Jesus’ disciples leave him at this point, so hard is this teaching for them to accept – the only time we read of disciples leaving Jesus for doctrinal reasons. Yet rather than change his teaching Jesus lets them go. But we also hear how Peter, despite not understanding, despite being just as bewildered by it all as the disciples who walked away, is able to believe: he had the complete trust, that somehow what the Master was saying had to be true. And so the Catholic Church, for two thousand years, has continued to proclaim the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist as an absolutely essential truth of faith.
The Eucharist in Tradition
That, then, is the central scriptural witness to the Eucharist: the four institution narratives from the Last Supper accounts; and the Bread of Life discourse. We then see how all that is understood in Tradition, in particular in the writings of the Church Fathers. We will look first at two examples from the earliest Fathers, from the 2nd century. In discussion with non-Catholics, it is useful to look at the very early writings, because there is often the accusation that the Catholic Church only introduced certain things centuries down the track. The earliest Fathers are great evidence against that.
First, St Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr, in his Letter to the Smyrnaeans, about AD 110. He condemns those who, ‘abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again.’
‘Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.’ (It is interesting to note that this is actually the first known use in history of the expression ‘the Catholic Church’, in about the year 110.)
Then about AD 155, we have the earliest extended description of the Mass, from St Justin Martyr. (Apol. 1, 66) Looking at the section dealing with the Eucharistic presence: ‘This food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.
‘For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.
‘For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me. This is My body’; and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, ‘This is My blood’; and gave it to them alone…’
Just a few quotes from the later Fathers, in the 4th century:
St Cyril of Jerusalem: ‘filled with an unshakeable faith that what seems to be bread is not bread – though it tastes like it – but rather the Body of Christ; and that what seems to be wine is not wine – even though it too tastes like it – but rather the Blood of Christ…draw strength from receiving this bread as spiritual food and your soul will rejoice.’ (Catech. 22.9)
St Ambrose: ‘Let us be assured that this is not what nature formed but what the blessing has consecrated; and there is greater power in the blessing than in nature, since nature itself is changed through the blessing.’ ‘Surely the word of Christ, who could make something that did not exist out of nothing, can change things that do exist into something they were not before.’ (De myst. 9.50-52)
And St John Chrysostom: ‘It is not man who makes what is put before him the Body and Blood of Christ, but Christ Himself who was crucified for us. The priest standing there in the place of Christ says these words, but their power and grace are from God. This is my Body, he says, and these words transform what lies before him.’ (prod. Jud. 1:6)
The Eucharist in the Magisterium
Finally, we will look at the Eucharistic teachings of the Magisterium, which gives us the true interpretation of Scripture and Tradition under the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit. For a thousand years, belief in the real presence held peaceful possession. The first prominent denial of it was not until the French theologian Berengarius in the eleventh century. There was a unanimous outcry from the Church, and he was obliged to retract by Pope St Gregory VII.
The greatest of the medieval councils, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), proclaimed as part of its Creed: ‘The priest himself, Jesus Christ, is also the sacrifice. His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the appearances of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the Body by the divine power and the wine into the blood, to the effect that we receive from what is his, what he has received from what is ours, in order that the mystery of unity may be accomplished.’ (DS 802. The term ‘transubstantiation’ has its first known use in the 11th century; it is common for the Church to develop language to express more clearly the original meaning of Scripture and Tradition, like the word ‘Trinity’.)
The Council of Trent
The greatest challenge to the Church’s Eucharistic faith was from the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, and the Church responded at the Council of Trent with her most extended dogmatic teaching on the Real Presence and on the Sacrifice of the Mass. So in the Decree on the Sacrament of the Eucharist in 1551 there were eleven infallible definitions in the concluding canons (formulated as condemnations of false opinions). We quote some of the most central:
‘If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really and substantially contained, but says that he is in it only as in a sign or figure or by his power, let him be anathema.’ (DS 1651)
‘If anyone says that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine remains together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and denies the wonderful and unique change of the whole substance of the bread into his body and of the whole substance of the wine into his blood while only the species of bread and wine remain, a change which the Catholic Church very fittingly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema.’ (DS 1652)
‘If anyone denies that in the venerable sacrament of the eucharist the whole Christ is contained under each species and under each part of either species when separated, let him be anathema.’ (DS 1653)
‘If anyone says that Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is not to be adored in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist with the worship of latria…or that it is not to be publicly exposed for the people’s adoration and that those who adore it are idolaters, let him be anathema.’ (DS 1656)
And in the decree on the Sacrifice of the Mass in 1562, there are nine infallible definitions. We look at three:
‘If anyone says that in the Mass a true and proper sacrifice is not offered to God…let him be anathema.’ (DS 1751)
‘If anyone says that by the words “Do this in remembrance of me” Christ did not establish the apostles as priests or that he did not order that they and other priests should offer his body and blood, let him be anathema.’ (DS 1752)
‘If anyone says that the sacrifice of the Mass is merely offering of praise and thanksgiving or that it is a simple commemoration of the sacrifice accomplished on the Cross, but not a propitiatory sacrifice, or that it benefits only those who communicate, and that it should not be offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfaction and other necessities, let him be anathema.’ (DS 1753)
The recent Magisterium
These unchangeable teachings of Trent remain today the dogmatic cornerstone of our Eucharistic faith. So we see the modern documents of the Magisterium on the Eucharist completely upholding and defending those teachings.
We can mention some of the major documents of the Magisterium since Vatican II that deal with the Eucharist. In 1965, there was the encyclical of St Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, ‘The Mystery of Faith’, strongly reaffirming the Catholic faith in the Mass as a sacrifice, and in ‘the dogma of transubstantiation’. (DS 4410) (10) The same affirmations appeared in his Credo of the People of God (1968). The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) naturally presented the whole range of the Church’s Eucharistic teachings. St John Paul II’s last encyclical, already mentioned, was Ecclesia de Eucharistia in 2003; and in 2007 we have the Apostolic Exhortation of Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, ‘The Sacrament of Charity’.
That is a brief overview of the teaching of Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium on the Most Holy Eucharist, Sacrifice, Presence and Banquet. On that foundation stone of our Catholic Eucharistic faith, we can build all the reflections of our Summer School.
We conclude with words of the Second Vatican Council – first from its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963) (47): ‘At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Saviour instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet “in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.”’ (DS 4047)
The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (1964) (11) proclaimed that the Eucharist is ‘the source and the summit of the Christian life’. (DS 4127) And the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests Presbyterorum Ordinis (1965) (5) declared: ‘The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.’
